The government of China, General Administration of Customs, via the state-controlled Xinhua news, has released data covering its exports of all types of bearings, for December 2008 and the full year.
China's state-volunteered export data is notoriously inaccurate, tending to dramatically understate both the quantity and value. Although the specific numbers may be suspect, the data does offer insight to general trends in volume, growth, and pricing which have proven valuable in terms of general industry analysis.
Export data for December 2008
QTY 218,770,000 bearings
total value USD $155.1 million
average value USD $0.709
Compared to November 2008
count 197,430,000 bearings
total value USD $153.5 million
average value USD $0.777
Compared to October 2008
QTY 258,040,000 bearings
total value USD $176.6 million
average value USD $0.684
Compared to September 2008
QTY 280,630,000 bearings
total value USD $195.3 million
average value USD $0.695
As the export data indicates, the global economic slowdown is having a strong impact on bearing manufacturers in China, masked somewhat by seasonality in the raw numbers. There are also numerous reports that year-end data is subject to many government "adjustments" needed to show production met levels indicated by the central planners.
Although there is some seasonality apparent in the bearing export data supplied, China's bearing exports are clearly dropping more sharply than in previous years.
July 324 million bearings
August 312 million
September 281 million
October 258 million
November 197 million
December 219 million
Calendar year 2008
2008 exports 3.349 billion bearings
2007 exports 3.265 billion bearings
2008 export value $2.06 billion
2007 export value $1.55 billion
The most telling numbers, however, are eBearing.com's own rolling year-on-year figures for export growth. As 2008 wore on, we calculate China's bearing industry -- almost completely dependent upon exports -- suffered a dramatic slowdown which is reflected in the year-on-year growth rate from 2007:
through June 15%
through July 14%
through August 13%
through September 11%
through October 10%
through November 5.5%
through December year-end 2.6% $0.709
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